Presented on Wednesday, May 25 in the Barn at Quarry Farm. Mark Twain was unquestionably among the most prolific and hardest working authors of his era. But did Twain ever really "work" at writing? He consistently identified his creative activities more closely with "play" then with "work" and may even have conceived of writing as antithetical to labor. In this lecture, Professor Wonham will examine Twain's understanding of these sometimes operated, sometimes interchangeable categories as they operate in and through his fiction.
Henry Wonham is Professor and Head of the Department of English at the University of Oregon. He is the author of several books, including Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale and Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism, both published by Oxford University Press.
